Expertise

About

Lea Johnston is an expert on mental health and criminal law and procedure. Her scholarship has explored the theoretical underpinnings of mental health courts, the sentencing of mentally disordered offenders, and competency standards for self-representation. A productive scholar, Johnston has appeared in the Washington University Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, and the Washington Law Review among others. In 2012, the California Supreme Court quoted Johnston’s proposed standard for representational competence and endorsed its use by courts and experts. Her work has been widely cited by legal scholars and appears in leading treatises in criminal law, constitutional law, and criminal procedure. Her work has also received attention from social scientists, and her theory of sentencing forms part of the theoretical framework for the standard textbook for forensic psychiatry fellowship programs. Johnston currently serves as the Chair-Elect for the Law and Mental Disability Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Professor Johnston earned her A.B. from Princeton University and her J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School. She previously served as a litigation associate at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C., and director of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group in Baltimore, MD. Johnston clerked for Judge Richard Tallman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Johnston is currently a Professor of Law and Assistant Director of the Criminal Justice Center.

This course explores the relationship of psychiatry and the law and will cover governmental efforts to deprive the “mentally disabled” of liberty or property through the criminal, civil commitment, and guardianship systems. Key goals include learning when and how mental health experts may participate in the legal process, how to utilize these experts, and how effectively to respond to them. The course will begin with an attempt to define “mental disability” as that term is used for legal purposes.